by From Doon
Wexford sent Martin over to Flagford in search of Janet Tipping. Then he rang Drury’s number. Burden answered. They hadn’t found anything in the house. Mrs Drury was staying with her sister in Hastings, but the sister had no telephone.
‘Martin’ll have to get down there,’ Wexford said. ‘I can’t spare you. What did Spellman say?’
‘They closed at five-thirty sharp on Tuesday. Drury collected his wife’s vegetable order on Wednesday.’
‘What’s he buying vegetables for, anyway? He grows them in the garden.’
‘The order was for tomatoes, a cucumber and a marrow, sir.’
‘That’s fruit, not vegetables. Talking of gardening, I’m going to get some lights over to you and they can start digging. I reckon that purse and that key could be interred with Drury’s potatoes.’
Dudley Drury was in a pitiful state when Wexford got back to Sparta Grove. He was pacing up and down but he looked weak at the knees.
‘He’s been sick, sir,’ Gates said.
‘Hard cheese,’ Wexford said. ‘What d’you think I am, a health visitor?’
The search of the house had been completed, and the place looked a lot tidier than it had before they began. When the lighting equipment arrived Bryant and Gates started digging over the potato patch. White-faced, Drury watched from the dining-room windows as the clods of earth were lifted and turned. This man, Wexford thought, had once said life would be unlivable without Margared Parsons. had he really meant it would be unendurable, if another possessed her?
‘I’d like you to come down to the station now, Drury.’
‘Are you going to arrest me?’
‘I’d just like to ask you a few more questions,’ Wexford said. ‘Just a few more questions.’
Meanwhile Burden had driven over to Pomfret, awakened the ironmonger and checked his nephew’s alibi.
‘Dud always gets off early on Tuesdays,’ he grumbled. ‘Gets earlier and earlier every week, it does. More like five than a quarter past.’
‘So you’d say he left around five last Tuesday?’
‘I wouldn’t like to say five. Ten past, a quarter past. I was busy in the shop. Dud came in and said, “I’m off now, Uncle.” I’d no call to go checking upon on him, had I?’
‘It might have been ten past or a quarter past?’
‘It might have been twenty past for all I know.’
It was still raining softly. The main road was black and stickily gleaming. Whatever Miss Sweeting may have seen in the afternoon, the lane and the wood were deserted now. The top branches of the trees moved in the wind. Burden slowed down, thinking how strange it was that an uninteresting corner of the countryside should suddenly have become, because of the use to which someone had put it, a sinister and dreadful hiding place, the focal point of curious eyes and the goal, perhaps for years to come, of half the visitors to the neighbourhood. From henceforth Flagford Castle would take second place to Prewett’s wood in the guide book of the ghoulish.
He met Martin on the forecourt of the police station. Janet Tipping couldn’t be found. As usual on Saturday night she had gone out with her boy friend, and her mother had told Martin with a show of aggressive indifference that it was nothing for her to return as late as one or two o’clock. The cottage was dirty and the mother a slattern. She didn’t know where her daughter was and, on being asked to hazard a guess, said that Janet and her friend had probably gone for a spin to the coast on his motor-bike.
Burden knocked on Wexford’s door and the Chief Inspector shouted to him to come in.
Drury and Wexford sat facing each other.
‘Let’s go over Tuesday evening again,’ Wexford was saying. Burden moved silently into one of the steel and tweed chairs. The clock on the wall, between the filing cabinet where Doon’s books still lay and the map of Kingsmarkham, said that it wanted ten minutes to midnight.
‘I left the shop at a quarter past five and I drove straight to Flagford. When I got to Spellman’s they were closed so I went down the side and looked round the greenhouses. I called out a couple of times but they’d all gone. Look, I’ve told you all this.’
Wexford said quietly, ‘All right, Drury. Let’s say I’ve got a bad memory.’
Drury’s voice had become very high and strained. He took out his handkerchief and wiped his forehead.
‘I had a look round to see if the order was anywhere about, but it wasn’t.’ He cleared his throat. ‘I was a bit fed-up on account of my wife wanting the vegetables for tea. I drove slowly through the village because I thought I might see Mr Spellman and get him to let me have the order, but I didn’t see him.’
‘Did you see anybody you know, anybody you used to know when you lived in Flagford?’
‘There were some kids,’ Drury said. ‘I don’t know who they were. Look, I’ve told you the rest. I went into The Swan and this girl served me . . .’
‘What did you have to drink?’
‘A half of bitter.’ He blushed. At the lie, Burden wondered, or at the breach of faith? ‘The place was empty. I coughed and after a bit this girl came out from behind the back. I ordered the bitter and paid for it. She’s bound to remember.’
‘Don’t worry, we’ll ask her.’
‘She didn’t stay in the bar. I was all alone. When I’d finished my drink I went back to Spellman’s to see if there was anyone about. I didn’t see anyone and I went home.’
Drury jumped up and gripped the edge of the desk. Wexford’s papers quivered and the telephone receiver rattled in its rest.
‘Look,’ he shouted, ‘I’ve told you. I wouldn’t have laid a finger on Margaret.’
‘Sit down,’ Wexford said and Drury crouched back, his face twitching. ‘You were very jealus of her, weren’t you?’ His tone had become conversational, understanding. ‘You didn’t want her to have any friends but you.’
‘That’s not true.’ He tried to shout but his voice was out of control. ‘She was just a girl friend. I don’t know what you mean, jealous. Of course I didn’t want her going about with other boys when she was with me.’
‘Were you her lover, Drury?’
‘No, I was not.’ He flushed again at the affront. ‘You’ve got no business to ask me things like that. I was only eighteen.’
‘You gave her a lot of presents, didn’t you, a lot of books?’
‘Doon gave her those books, not me. She’d finished with Doon when she came out with me. I never gave her anything. I couldn’t afford it.’
‘Where’s Foyle’s, Drury?’
‘It’s in London. It’s a bookshop.’
‘Did you ever buy any books there and give them to Margaret Godfrey?’
‘I tell you I never gave her any books.’
‘What about The Picture of Dorian Gray? You didn’t give her that one. Why did you keep it? Because you thought it would shock her?’
Drury said dully, ‘I’ve given you a specimen of my printing.’
‘Printing changes a lot in twelve years. Tell me about the book.’
‘I have told you. We were in her aunt’s cottage and the book came in a parcel. She opened it and when she saw who’d sent it she said I could have it.’
At last they left him to sit in silence with the sergeant. Together they went outside.
‘I’ve sent Drury’s printing over to that handwriting bloke in St Mary’s Road,’ Wexford said. ‘But printing, Mike, and twelve years ago! It looks as if whoever printed those inscriptions did so because his handwriting was poor or difficult to read. Drury’s writing is very round and clear. I got the feeling he doesn’t write much and his writing’s never matured.’
‘He’s the only person we’ve talked to who called Mrs P. Minna,’ Burden said, ‘and who knew about Doon. He had one of those hood things in his house and while it could be one of the other five it could be Mrs P.’s. If he left his uncle’s at five-ten or fivefifteen even he could have been at Prewett’s by twenty past and by then Bysouth had had those cows in for nearly half an ho
ur.’
The telephones had been silent for a long time now, an unusually long time for the busy police station. What had happened to the call they had been awaiting since lunchtime? Wexford seemed to read his thoughts almost uncannily.
‘We ought to hear from Colorado any minute,’ he said. ‘Calculating roughly that they’re about seven hours behind us in time, suppose Mrs Katz was out for the day, she’d be getting home just about now. It’s half past twelve here and that makes it between five and six in the west of the United States. Mrs Katz has got little kids. I reckon she and her family have been out for the day and they haven’t been able to get hold of her. But she ought to be coming home about now and I hope they won’t be too long.’
Burden jumped as the bell pealed. He lifted the receiver and gave it to Wexford. As soon as he spoke Burden could tell it was just another bit of negative evidence.
‘Yes,’ Wexford said. ‘Yes, thank you very much. I see. Can’t be helped . . . Yes, good night.’
He turned back to Burden. ‘That was Egham, the handwriting fellow. He says Drury could have printed those inscriptions. There’s no question of the printing being disguised, but he says it was very mature for a boy of eighteen and if it’s Drury’s he would have expected a much greater development than Drury’s present specimen shows.
‘Moreover, there’s another point in his favour. I took a sample from the treads of his tyres and although they haven’t finished with it, the lab boys are pretty certain that car hadn’t been parked in a muddy lane since it was new. The stuff I got was mostly sand and dust. Let’s have some tea, Mike.’
Burden cocked his thumb at the door.
‘A cup for him, sir?’
‘My God, yes,’ Wexford said. ‘How many times do I have to tell you? This isn’t Mexico.’
13
And I am sometimes proud and sometimes meek,
And sometimes I remember days of old . . .
Christina Rossetti, Aloof
Margaret Godfrey was one of five girls on the stone seat and she sat in the middle of the row. Those who stood behind rested their hands on the shoulders of the seated. Wexford counted twelve faces. The snapshot Diana Stevens had taken was very sharp and clear and the likenesses, even after so long, were good. He re-created in his mind the face he had seen on the damp ground, then stared with awakened curiosity at the face in the sun.
The others were all smiling, all but Margaret Godfrey, and her face was in repose. The white forehead was very high, the eyes wide and expressionless; her lips were folded, the corners tilted very slightly upwards, and she was looking at the camera very much as the Gioconda had looked at Leonardo. Secrecy vied with something else in those serene features. This girl, Wexford thought, looked as if she had undergone an experience most of her fellows could never have fathomed, and it had marked her not with suffering or shame but simply with smug tranquillity.
The gym tunic was an incongruity. She could have worn a high-necked dress with puffy sleeves. Her hair, soft then, not crimped and waved as it had been later, skimmed her cheekbones and lay across her temples in two shining arcs.
Wexford glanced across to the silent Drury, now sitting some five yards from him. Then, screening it once more with his hands, he looked long at the photograph. When Burden came in he was still gazing and his tea had grown cold.
It was almost three o’clock.
‘Miss Tipping is here,’ Burden said.
Wexford came out of the sunny garden, covered the snapshot with a file and said:
‘Let’s have her in, then.’
Janet Tipping was a plump healthy-looking girl with a cone of lacquered hair above a stupid suspicious face. When she saw Drury her expression, vacuous and uncomprehending, was unaltered.
‘Well, I can’t say,’ she said. ‘I mean, it was a long time ago.’
Not twelve years, Burden thought, only four days.
‘I could have served him. I mean, I serve hundreds of fellows with bitter . . .’ Drury stared at her, round-eyed, as if he was trying to drive recognition into her dim, tired consciousness. ‘Look here,’ she said, ‘I don’t want to get anybody hung.’
She came closer, peering, in the manner of one attracted by a monstrosity in a museum. Then she retreated, shaking her head.
‘You must remember me,’ Drury shouted. ‘You’ve got to remember. I’ll do anything, I’ll give you anything if you’ll only remember. You don’t realize, this means everything to me . . .’
‘Oh, do me a favour,’ the girl said, frightened now. ‘I’ve racked my brains and I don’t remember.’ She looked at Wexford and said, ‘Can I go now?’
The telephone rang as Burden showed her out. He lifted the receiver and handed it to Wexford.
‘Yes . . . yes, of course I want her brought back,’ Wexford said. ‘That was Martin,’ he said to Burden outside. ‘Mrs Drury said she bought that rain-hood on Monday afternoon.’
‘That doesn’t necessarily mean –’ Burden began.
‘No, and Drury got in after six-thirty on Tuesday. She remembers because she was waiting for the tomatoes. She wanted to put them in a salad for their tea. If he wasn’t killing Mrs P., Mike, that was a hell of a long drink he had. For an innocent man he’s practically crazy with terror.’
Again Burden said, ‘That doesn’t necessarily mean –’
‘I know, I know. Mrs Parsons liked them green and goosey, didn’t she?’
‘I suppose there wasn’t anything in the garden, was there, sir?’
‘Five nails, about a hundredweight of broken bricks and a Dinky Toy Rolls-Royce,’ Wexford said. ‘He ought to thank us. It won’t need digging in the autumn.’ He paused and added, ‘If he’s still here in the autumn.’
They went back into the office. Drury was sitting utterly immobile, his face lard-coloured like a peeled nut.
‘That was a mighty long drink, Drury,’ Wexford said. ‘You didn’t get home till after six-thirty.’
Drury mumbled, his lips scarcely moving: ‘I wanted the order. I hung about. There’s a lot of traffic about at six. I’m not used to drink and I didn’t dare to drive for a bit. I wanted to find Mr Spellman.’
Half a pint, Burden thought, and he didn’t dare to drive?
‘When did you first resume your relationship with Mrs Parsons?’
‘I tell you there wasn’t a relationship. I never saw her for twelve years. Then I was driving though the High Street and I stopped and spoke to her . . .’
‘You were jealous of Mr Parsons, weren’t you?’
‘I never met Parsons.’
‘You would have been jealous of anyone Mrs Parsons had married. You didn’t have to see him. I suggest you’d been meeting Mrs Parsons, taking her out in your car. She got tired of it and threatened to tell your wife.’
‘Ask my wife, ask her. She’ll tell you I’ve never been unfaithful to her. I’m happily married.’
‘Your wife’s on her way here, Drury. We’ll ask her.’
Drury had jumped each time the telephone rang. Now as it sounded again after a long lull, a great shudder passed through him and he gave a little moan. Wexford, for hours on tenterhooks, only nodded to Burden.
‘I’ll take it outside,’ he said.
Bryant’s shorthand covered the sheet of paper in swift spidery hieroglyphics. Wexford had spoken to the Colorado police chief, but now as he stood behind Bryant he could hear nothing of that thick drawl through the headphones, only watch the words fall on to paper in a tangled code.
By four it had be transcribed. His face still phlegmatic, but to Burden vital with latent excitement, Wexford read the letter again. The dead words, now coldly typed on official paper, seemed still to have the force of life, a busy bustling life led by a woman in a country backwater. Here in the depths of the night, among the office furniture and the green steel filing cabinets, Mrs Parsons was for a moment – one of the few moments in the whole case – resurrected and become a real person. There was no drama in her words and only the whisp
er of a small tragedy, but because of her fate the letter was a dreadful document, the only existing recorded fragment of her inner life.
Dear Nan (Wexford read),
I can picture your surprise when you read my new address. Yes, we have come back here and are living a stone’s throw from school and only a few miles from the dear old cottage. We had to sell auntie’s house and lost quite a bit on it, so when Ron got the chance of a job out here we thought this might be the answer. It is supposed to be cheaper living in the country, but we have not noticed it yet, I can tell you.
In spite of what you all thought, I quite liked living in Flagford. It was only you-know-what that turned me off it. Believe me, Nan, I was really scared over that Doon business, so you can imagine I wasn’t too pleased to run slap bang up against Doon again a couple of weeks after we moved in. Although I’m a lot older I still feel frightened and a bit revolted. I said it was better to let things rest but Doon will not have this. I must say it is quite pleasant to get a few rides in a nice comfortable car and get taken out for meals in hotels.
Believe me, Nan, it is as it has always been, just friendship. When Doon and I were younger I really don’t think we knew it could be anything else. At least, I didn’t. Of course the very thought disgusts me. Doon only wants companionship but it is a bit creepy.
So you are going to get another new car. I wish we could afford one but at present it is beyond our wildest dreams. I was sorry to hear about Kim having chicken pox so soon after measles. I suppose having a family has its drawbacks and its worries as well as its advantages. It does not look as if Ron and I will have the anxiety or the happiness now as I have not even had a false alarm for two years.
Still, I always say if you have a really happy marriage as we have, you should not need children to keep it together. Perhaps this is just sour grapes. Anyway, we are happy, and Ron seems much more relaxed now we are away from town. I never will understand, Nan, why people like Doon can’t be content with what they have and not keep crying for the moon.